At a July 15 appearance in Michigan, McCain dampened the speculation by calling Cheney “one of the most capable, experienced, intelligent and steady vice presidents this country has ever had.”

In interviews for Stephen Hayes’ 2007 biography of Cheney, McCain “strongly” asserted that Cheney “has been of enormous help to this president of the United States.” Politico’s Jonathan Martin reports today that in unpublished comments to Hayes, McCain also said that he would consider Cheney for a post in his administration:

Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: “I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

My two cents: this should scare people- the fact that McCain says “hell yeah” to a position for Dick Cheney (former CEO of Halliburton)- because of his nefariously sketchy and well-documented war profiteering exploits. Here are some facts (www.unspun.us)

Halliburton has had a monopoly on all oil contracts in Iraq awarded under the U.S occupation.

These contracts have all been awarded without competition and given the Halliburton the power to run all phases of Iraq’s oil industry including the ‘operation’ of Iraqi oil fields and ‘distribution’ of Iraqi oil.

For running this monopoly they have not only recieved enormous fees from the U.S Government (over Seven billion dollars in 2003 alone) they are allowed to charge a levy of over $6 dollars on every barrel of Oil that is exported from Iraq.

In September 2003, when asked by Tim Russert whether he was “involved in any way in the awarding of [Iraq] contracts” to Halliburton, Cheney replied “Of course not, Tim. . . . And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government.” In Fact internal Pentagon documents reveal that the awarding of the Halliburton contracts “has been coordinate [with] VP’s office.” An internal Pentagon email reveals that the award of no-bid Halliburton contracts “has been coordinated with the VP’s office.” (Burger & Zagorin, Time Magazine 05.30.04, CAP Daily Report 06.01.04 and 06.15.04).

The first section of last night’s democratic debate concentrated a huge amount of time on Obama’s relationships with various controversial figures, however flimsy. As a future politician, I now realize that I must completely distance myself from any controversial person that I have ever come into contact with, no matter how obscurely that contact occurred.

First, I’ll just acknowledge that, at one point, Adolf Hitler appeared in a movie that I watched during my eighth grade history class. I apologize for viewing that film, but would like to point out that my teacher didn’t forewarn us that Hitler would appear in that movie. If I had known, I would have walked out of the classroom.

Second, I heard a Norwegian joke once, and I did laugh at it. I laughed at it because I’m a Swede and laughing at Norwegian jokes comes with the territory. However, I now reject and denounce that joke and I completely disown the person who made that joke. No really, they tried to call me today, and I didn’t pick up the phone because it might ruin my future political career.

Third, I once dated a Republican. I assure you that the relationship is now over and that it will not happen again. The fact that I dated a Republican does not make me one, I can assure you.